A depth camera can obtain depth images including information about a location of a human or other object in a physical space. The depth images may be used by an application in a computing system for a wide variety of applications. Many applications are possible, such as for military, entertainment, sports and medical purposes. For instance, depth images including information about a human can be mapped to a three-dimensional (3-D) human skeletal model and used to create an animated character or avatar.
To obtain a depth image, a depth camera typically projects infrared (IR) light onto one or more object in the camera's field of view. The IR light reflects off the object(s) and back to the camera, where it is incident on an image pixel detector array of the camera, and is processed to determine the depth image.
If a depth camera projects highly coherent IR light, then a speckle pattern may result, which reduces the resolution of the depth images obtained using the depth camera. Additionally, if an optical structure is used to achieve a desired illumination profile, the optical structure may produce undesirable diffraction artifacts, which also reduce the resolution of the depth images obtained using the depth camera.